Spotlight on top pay

The business secretary claims greater transparency will contribute to curbing excessive top executive pay (Report, 24 January). This is yet another triumph of hope over experience, of fantasy-based policy over evidence-based policy. Extensive increases in mandatory disclosure of information about such pay in the US led not to a decrease but to an enormous and accelerating growth in such pay. More information fuelled even greater executive cherry-picking as well as macho "uber-leadership" signals to irrational financial markets. Greater transparency, of itself, is not merely ineffectual but counterproductive.Brendan McSweeneyProfessor of management, Royal Holloway College, University of London

• Please can some of the City's top 1,200 (average pay £1.8m) make a donation to the address below, as we try to keep our home and ebusiness afloat.D Ballantyne DirectorVA Goodhead DirectorAmirill Ltd, Melksham, Wiltshire